Using SharpDevelop

rameshbn1

Hello friends,

Anyone using SharpDevelop here?

I discovered this free C# IDE quite by accident, and I've fallen in love with it. I was a VC++ and VB guy before, but now I code almost exclusively in C#.

Imagine - these guys used the command line compiler supplied with the .NET SDK to write a parser, then used that to develop SharpDevelop IDE. Each version of the IDE was used to write the next version with more features.

Then they gave it all away - the program and the source code - for free.
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/Download/

And then they wrote a free book about it. http://www.apress.com/free/content/Dissecting_A_CSharp_Application.pdf

Of course it's not as good as the Microsoft VS IDE. Sometimes it feels quite buggy and annoying errors popup. But hey, its free - and just think about the effort that went into it!

If you haven't tried this out, you definitely should. If you already have tried it, let's talk about it.

falconfx

I also heard about this development IDE for C#. I saw some screenshots and found it very simple to use.

By the way I must say I don't like the MS.NET Platform very much as it's very big in terms of space and speed. Even Windows doesn't come with it by default so users have to install it beforing using an application developed on this framework.

I think Visual Studio is undoubtfully more complete. Sometime ago I read about a special (FREE!) version of VS.NET named "Express". Try to do a look at Microsoft's website.

Good development!

rameshbn1

Hi Falcon,

Yes, I've heard about VS Express. I've also tried it out, but somehow, I liked it less than SharpDevelop. Downloading Express Editions from Microsoft requires a high speed net connection on the computer that you want to install. If you don't have it, you need to download a Really Big ISO file. It took me six hours to download this (of course my connection wasn't very good). Then, you need to download an ISO Ripper to get at the files for installation. So you see, Express is not really free - you have to spent some effort and internet time to get it installed. It has feature limitations compared to the pro versions too.

You are right about the .net framework. Not many users with old computers are likely to have the framework installed. However, it is said that MS is going to bundle the framework with all future Windows editions. This will solve the problem. Anyway, It's my guess that MS will be building around the .NET framework in future editions.

Did you go through the book? It's fantastic - lots of coding examples for implementing useful techniques, which you will not find in a normal C# book.

You can even write VB.NET programs using SharpDevelop, and there is a form designer which I've found is good enough. But as I said, things are a little buggy at times - may be they will sort things out by the next version.